


Day #10: Roses

by imaginationandheartbreak (alexgrey)



Series: 30 Days of Writing for Ships: Mattex [8]
Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: 30 days of writing for ships, F/M, Mattex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-10
Updated: 2014-06-10
Packaged: 2018-02-04 04:31:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1765573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexgrey/pseuds/imaginationandheartbreak





	Day #10: Roses

 He’d agonized. A call first? No, too out of character after all these months. And he was still a little hurt, to be honest, that Alex hadn’t reached out to **him**. She’d sent a few texts – four in the past 11 months – and that was it. One of them had simply said ‘hi.’ So three, really. He’d sent 17. Fuck. She hadn’t come to see his play in London.

But he was on the convention circuit in the States and would need to fly over soon anyway, he reasoned. It wasn’t **at all** out of place to want to be in New York, springtime, watching a friend and former colleague in a spectacular debut. Even if he hadn’t exactly been invited. And getting there earlier would be better, wouldn’t it? This thing with Lily James was heating up faster than he had imagined. He’d like to see Alex. See her. Talk with her. _Ask her._ Find out. Shit. Alex.

If he closed his eyes he could still smell Alex Kingston’s shampoo, still feel the roll of his tongue in that perfect mouth of hers, her own tongue searching, the tiny flick of its tip on the roof of his own surprised mouth before the director yelled cut and Matt had said, huskily “again” under his breath like a child wanting another ride and Alex had laughed, then, low and triumphant, whispering an “oh, yeeees.” Matt thought of her lips at odd, inappropriate times - on airplanes and autograph lines and in bed, late night, sometimes when he wasn’t even **alone** for fuck’s sake, some poor gorgeous expectant girl being compared to a fantasy Alex Kingston. Impossible. The girl in his bed, girl after faceless, curl-less girl, always came up short, of course. He was perversely lonely … not lonely for the girl who wanted him so desperately to stroke and kiss her from neck to waist so she could moan a proprietarily ‘love you’ into the bedroom air (they all did): lonely for Alex Kingston, the possibility of her. It was an ache that hadn’t eased. He had to move forward. Either with someone else or with her.

Three nights ago, as Lily had laughed and cupped his cheek and raked her fingernails though his hair and finally stroked a tentative thumb across the band of his Calvin’s, pressing her small hips to his body, he hadn’t even been able to get hard and had brushed Lily’s hand away, embarrassed, cupping her breasts gently as an offering and whispering that maybe they should take it slow. When the door shut behind her he had held himself for a long moment in shame and surprise, trying to figure out what was wrong. A long time passed, his back to that door, before it even registered that he was stroking himself rock hard and moaning to an image of his hand on Alex Kingston’s ass, her body moving gently against him, his lips on her neck, biting against a sob.

 He had to know. He had to say. Put the fantasy to bed. Or Alex. He came unsteadily and guiltily in his hand, cleaned himself up and booked his flight.

Not that he’d been any better. His own communications so deliberately on the surface they bordered on rude (“Hi yourself”). He should have tried harder. Let her know. He would.

 

*

He got benefit tickets to opening night anonymously. The last thing he wanted was to impose a Who intertext on her New York Macbeth moment, Alex moving so gorgeously forward. He didn’t want to be in her spotlight at all, just in her orbit. Just watch her. Support her. _Love her._ She’d be triumphant, he knew. God, she was so consummate. Her microexpressions – the almost imperceptible movements of her eyes and lashes and jaw and lips - made his whole body hyper-attuned to her. She made the whole world lean into her achingly. It was a superpower he’d tasted up close. Too close, maybe. Fuck. _Again?_

So no call, then. Better maybe – maybe best of all - to write. Less chance of backing out; of making light.

He’d written in school. Loved poetry. Alex had often teased him, asking to see the pages of his notebooks and grabbing laughingly. Kind, interested, sexy as fuck Alex Kingston. Why hadn’t he written her poetry? His poems to her were mostly in the way he’d touched her, he reflected – fingers in her hair, the double-dog-dare of his eyes on her nipples, the dirty way he said “braless again, Ms. Kingston? The cast and crew thank you,” with a fond laugh that was always returned. He stared at his old notebooks now, flipping through for inspiration and clues and signs he could do this and realized the way you suddenly realize an insanely obvious thing – instantly, impossible to see it otherwise now - that almost all the marginalia, the small images, the outlines for poems he’d sketched during his time on Who were about Alex Kingston. All the unfinished poems were for her.

He takes up a pen; starts. Thinks about Alex’s smile and her clavicles, her curls and her giggles, the way she always leaned into him, so warm and open when they walked side-by-side, the feel of the small of her back on his hot hand, as he propelled her from picnic table to set, worried that he was transmitting his desire through the back of her shirt too boldly. But once she had actually **purred**. His imagination moves quickly across the line of friendship and his poem fills with images of his tongue on her clit now, his finger against the bud of her ass, the string between his heart and her screaming. The first images in the poem are golden: honey skin, the fucking sun, lost in her: standard. He pitches it to the floor. Not right. Begin again.

The next poem is more concrete; revealing: his need utterly exposed. What he wants to take from her. What he would give her. He writes himself fucking her, sure, his cock aiming for her fucking backbone, but also entering her through every pore, teasing her with the idea of him, making her ribs and hips, even her eyelashes impossibly open, filling every part of her. _Love._ That’s the one. The poem is a question and a promise and the screaming of her name over and over. A poem designed to leave her breathless and liquid and knowing. The poem is also her ankle against his cheek; a rough fuck, his cock deep in her ass. He is Macbeth returning from battle and not just Matt. The poem throws her against that wall, pulls up her skirt and sinks in with a cry. He writes it out in a careful hand, a hand that smooths across his erection more than once before the second stanza. Done.

 

*

His palms are sweaty approaching the Armory door and there are few cameras out front. He is carrying 48 longstem roses and the poem, burning in a thick gold envelope in the centre of the bouquet with the name ‘Alex Kingston’ written across it. He is grateful for the arrival of Kate Beckinsale, something that allows him a chance to sneak in undetected between William Dafoe and Bebe Newirth on the stairs with a polite ‘hello’ and whisper his name at the long wooden table in exchange for his ticket without much fuss. He hands the roses (“please be careful with the card”) to an assistant dressed in Chanel who pronounces them exquisite. She will, of course, handle it.

Matt mostly keeps his head down the holding room, just happily feeling the expectant snap in the air: opening night. He would love to spend more time in the theatre. More time in _this_ theatre. What will Alex do when she gets the roses backstage? Point of no return. By the time the bell rings and he’s walking with his clan across the Armory heath he almost wants to run back and retrieve the poem, but he resists, and sinks onto his bench feeling giddy with possibility as well as a bit fear-sick. And then he sees her: Lady Macbeth, back to the audience. Alex. He has never been this nervous. He lets himself stare at Alex Kingston’s waist, as she lights candles at the altar for a good 10 minutes, breathing in and out along with her movements. Calmed.

 Soon he is swept away by the smell of mud, the clang of the armor, so so close, and Kenneth Branaugh’s hands on Alex’s waist and it’s odd, really, to feel this deep Shakespearean need mirrored in his own body. Alex Kingston could make him an accomplice to anything, he thinks: Macbeth you never stood a chance. And Kenneth Branaugh’s hands on her breasts, now running roughly against his wife’s cunt, pulling at her jaw doesn’t make Matt jealous… quite the opposite, his identification in that second so strong he places his tartan program across his lap.

 He’s spellbound. Lady Macbeth’s every action, every whisper. Alex's voice. Her range. Her stillness. Her expert decanting of mad energy. He’s holding his breath scene after scene and when the ovations begin he is on his feet so fast, clapping ’till his hands are ringing. Alex is so close he can see the flush of her cheeks, delight winning out over fear, as she takes in the ‘bravos’. Alex is so utterly brilliant.

 

_Oh._

 

He has made a terrible mistake. Terrible. She is going to be the toast of New York. What was he fucking _thinking_?

 

It’s a long, strange walk back along the manufactured heath. He avoids the line of photographers waiting on the stairs and heads directly back to the VIP room. Maybe he can grab the poem and leave. The room is now empty. _Shit._ This is a disaster. No… let fate play out, then, he thinks, and when he sees Dom Perignon being served he bounds up the anonymous side of the double staircase to grab a glass, almost spilling it, a bit of liquid courage before Alex arrives. She will have seen the roses. She will have read the poem. She’s not here yet.

 

Wait – there! He hears her name first: “Alex, this way!” and he knows she’s posing just on the next landing. What will she say? What should he do? He decides he will just move in for a hug: “yes or no, Alex?” At her mercy. He rubs his hand on his suit. Next to him a tall blond man is also gripping champagne. And there she is. Coming toward him. No: Wait! The blond man is moving toward HER. The stranger is wrapping Alex in his arms, almost spilling his champagne down the back of her sweater, and Matt’s close enough to touch her but she’s laughing something into some other man’s ear: “clumsy idiot” and Matt is propelled backward to the far wall by the words and can barely breathe. Shit. Boyfriend. Clumsy boyfriend?

 

Why had he thought she would be alone? Idiot. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spots the girl in Chanel stepping briskly forward with the roses, placing them in the arms of a delighted Alex Kingston, and he sees with fresh eyes how extravagant those roses are, how supremely and inappropriately gorgeous. Dozens of roses, stupidly red, cradling an equally extravagant and insanely pornographic poetic profession of love. The golden envelope is still sealed. Matt briefly toys with racing across the room and grabbing the envelope at the same moment the woman in Chanel is generously pointing him out in the shadows and Alex looks at him, then, with happy surprise, smiling, mouthing ‘oh. my. god!’ and he moves to make his way over to her but Alex is already ripping at the envelope like it's Christmas and he’s frozen. And there is the paper. The poem. His handwriting. His heart. Her eyes on his heart.

 

She’s reading the poem. She’s put the roses on the ground and the blond man is rubbing her back and she’s still reading the poem, holding it in two hands now. And Matt runs.


End file.
